Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write a post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the fourth day of the month is "Information."
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Last month, Anne asked some questions about my ongoing blog project in the comments. Far be it for me to leave anyone in the dark, despite the hundreds of words I've written about it already. Ha. Apparently this is an evergreen topic for me.
Basically, she asked two questions. How are you organizing these posts? Are you going to do some sort of summary at the end of the year?
Let's talk about organization. It's maybe not quite as organized as you might think, but it's not NOT organized, if you know what I mean. First up, I just have a handwritten calendar for every month in the journal where I track all of my quarterly goals. Since writing in my blog every day is a quarterly goal, I dutifully track it. Since I write in this every evening, I do get a good look at what prompts are coming up.
I also keep all the photos I've used for each theme of the project in a separate file in my Google Drive. You can see all of my "Information" photos below. If I've used more than one photo in a post, I just pick one to put in the folder. Bonus points if the photo has my cat or dog in it.
On the blog itself, I have not done a great job of organizing these posts. Basically, they all have a "365 Photo Project" label, but otherwise there's nothing to indicate they are not a "regular" post. I purposefully did not create a label for each theme, but I fear I may come to regret that.
Last time I did this same type of project - from June 2014 to June 2015 - I did do a summary post at the end of the project. I put together a photo collage of each of the theme's photos, wrote about any themes within the themes, and called out two or three posts that I wanted to draw attention to. The theme for the nineteenth day of the month back then was "My Best Friend" and here is my summary post. My goal for this time around is to write my regularly themed posts through October, which will be a full twelve months (November 2022 through October 2023) and then spend November 2023 doing similar retrospective posts, which will also allow me to do NaBloPoMo fairly easily.
And that's all I have to say about that. Can I do another six months of this? Only time will tell, I guess!
Which of these monthly themes is something you'd like to write about every month?
I think that given my personality, I would not want to tie myself down to having to write every day. I love writing and often I have enough to cover several days at a time, but I find I enjoy it more when I do not have to do it, if that makes sense. I did do a 365 photo project (almost 20!) years ago but I did not write anything for each photo, I just named it and posted it. I had a lot of fun doing that, and I felt that it got me outside more and helped me to look at my surroundings in a different way, AND helped me learn how to use my camera and to hone my eye and skills.
ReplyDeleteI hope that you can do another six months (plus one) of this and am enjoying your stories and the interactions they bring so keep up the good work!
Oh, just doing a photo a day is a good idea! A few people on my Instagram feed post a photo a day and I really like that as a challenge.
DeleteYou can definitely do this! I love your daily series and think you're being very creative with all the prompts!
ReplyDeleteI'm dithering about my posting schedule this summer. I really LIKE having a structure and the M-F setup works great during the regular year. But in the summer that's a bit much, but I also don't love the idea of doing MWF, either. What if some weeks I want to post daily, and then other weeks not at all. I realize NOBODY CARES ABOUT MY POSTING SCHEDULE...but I kinda do, and I haven't figured out what approach to take in the weeks and months ahead. This is one of those "not a problem" things I'm clearly making a "problem" - haha.
Yeah, I get dithering about a posting schedule. I kind of like the every day because I don't have to think about it, but I honestly am just running out of things to say. I can't imagine any of my readers really care about Zelda's medical issues! I think it's okay if your summer schedule is a bit more laissez faire!
DeleteSelfishly - I enjoy your daily posts and also noooooooooo I'll never be a daily poster, at least at this stage of my life. Toward the end of NaBloPo it got to be more of a "I have to do this" instead of a "I get to do this" or "I want to do this".
ReplyDeleteIt is funny how often I think "I have to post" because this is a completely 100% self-imposed challenge! I don't have to do it, just like you didn't have to do NaBloPoMo! People are funny.
DeleteThis is so great-- I love your whole project. As a writer, invention is the canon I struggle the most with, so I always love hearing about how other people use prompts for inspiration.
ReplyDeleteI'll admit that these prompts are getting stale and I wish I'd picked a few different ones! Ha.
DeleteYes, I love this project of yours. Even though I don't do it, I love bloggers who post daily (I'm already looking forward to NaBloPoMo again.) As for your question- I think "activity" would be an easy theme for me- I would just write about a favorite run or workout of the week. And I hate to say it, but "complaint" would also be pretty easy. It's always easy to find things to complain about.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I don't think complaint is all that easy unless I want to complain about the weather, the church bells, and Hannah's medical woes over and over again! I struggle every month to find something to whinge about and that sort of makes me happy.
DeleteFor some reason, I didn't realize but have come to suspect that you turned NaBloPoMo into a year long project (I know you mentioned it somewhere, but it apparently didn't compute). I've fallen hopelessly behind on staying on top of my Feedly, but I do enjoy your commitment to this project and all your posts :)
ReplyDeleteThere are so many posts. Don't even bother to try to catch up on my blog! It's not worth it!
DeleteBut it is <3
DeleteWow--that seems super organized to me!
ReplyDeleteAs for themes, I guess I'm in a bit of a rut as I keep writing about Scout--but (a) that's fine with me and (b) people I know IRL don't know about my blog, so I'm glad I have a space to wallow in my sorrow.
I think if there's a big thing in your life, it should be the theme! That's why you have a blog!
DeleteI love this series, and I love knowing that I have something to read every day. :) You are finding such fun and creative ways to address the prompts -- I think sometimes I have to remind myself that you are using a prompt at all, they seem so natural. While I loved NaNoBloPoMo and felt like I'd really gotten into the daily blogging habit by the end, I don't think I could do it every day without it consuming my life. So I applaud you for figuring out how to work it into your schedule!
ReplyDeleteHonestly, it is sort of consuming my life. I need to do better about having a set time during the weekends when I do most of the writing. I find myself constantly wondering what I can possibly write about!
DeleteComplaint would be pretty easy for me. Is that bad? I have A LOT of pet peeves. I could also write about our amazing library or my hold lists on a monthly basis!
ReplyDeleteI think complaint is harder than people think! It's easy to complain about the same things over and over again, but harder to come up with something new. At least that's been my experience!
DeleteI love this - as I'm sure you anticipated! Thank you for answering my questions!
ReplyDeleteIn one of the comments above, I was reading about how you're kind of over the prompts, and... well, maybe this is changing the rules in the middle, but why can't you pick different prompts for the remaining months? I can completely understand how they are getting stale. I also suspect we all like reading about the mundane details of someone else's life, which is why we are all loving your daily posts. :)
I'm already looking forward to the summary emails!
Also... it would be a great challenge for me to post daily for a month since I'm such an infrequent poster (and yet, I want to post more). Hm. Would you be wiling to share the full list of prompts? Or the noun generator site you used? Thanks!
I'm really resistant to changing the prompts because I think that even as I'm finding them a bit stale, I'm also getting to the more creative responses to them, too. So I think I'll see it out to the end, but if I ever do this again, I would definitely be more picky about exactly which nouns I used.
DeleteThe full list of prompts is here: https://ngradstudent.blogspot.com/2022/11/11-hat-craft.html
The noun generator we used is here: https://capitalizemytitle.com/random-noun-generator/
I just used it again and one of the nouns that was generated was popcorn! I could DEFINITELY write about popcorn every month. LOL.